Space Station Flight Continues

House Vote Keeps Money In Budget

July 30, 1992|By CLIFFORD KRAUSS N.Y. Times News Service

WASHINGTON — The House voted Wednesday to keep $1.73 billion in the budget to develop the Freedom space station, rejecting arguments that the country cannot afford such high-priced scientific programs when the federal deficit is out of control.

Proponents of the $30 billion space station argued that it would provide an indispensable stepping stone for exploring Mars and beyond and would enhance biomedical research into the health complications of long-range space flight.

But the debate centered on the economic issues of competitiveness, jobs and budget priorities. Rep. Bill Lowery, R-Calif., argued that Japan would take the lead in space research if Congress killed the space station, and that ``in the year 2020 we will find ourselves tooling around in small space vehicles with names like Honda and Toyota.''

In the end, the economic argument won as the House defeated, 238 to 181, a measure to strike the space station and appropriate $525 million to cover the costs of ending the program. The vote was on an amendment to an $86 billion appropriations bill.

[About 40 NASA employees and 20 contractors are working on the space station at the NASA Langley Research Center. Langley employees provide outside analysis of design work done by other NASA centers and contractors. Langley workers are also looking at the evolution of the space station and how it might be expanded.]

In the Virginia delegation, only Democrats Jim Olin, 6th, and Lewis Payne, 5th, voted to kill the space station. The other eight, including Herbert Bateman, R-Newport News; Norman Sisisky, D-Petersburg; and Owen Pickett, D-Virginia Beach, voted to save the project.

The vote belied the rising concern in Congress over the budget deficit and indicated that many members were swayed by the promise of jobs.

As 7 percent of the nation's work force is employed in the aerospace industry, and that sector is one of the few that provides a trade surplus, a consensus is emerging that the space station can benefit the economy.

That argument could lead to a reversal of a vote last month to withdraw money for the superconducting supercollider, a huge particle accelerator under construction in Texas.